Design of AMBA AXI4 protocol for System-on-Chip communication

Advanced microcontroller bus architecture (AMBA) protocol family provides metric-driven verification of protocol compliance, enabling comprehensive testing of interface intellectual property (IP) blocks and system-on-chip (SoC) designs. The AMBA advanced extensible interface 4 (AXI4) update to AMBA AXI3 includes the following: support for burst lengths up to 256 beats, updated write response requirements, removal of locked transactions and AXI4 also includes information on the interoperability of components. AMBA AXI4 protocol system supports 16 masters and 16 slaves interfacing. This paper presents a work aimed to design the AMBA AXI4 protocol modeled in Verilog hardware description language (HDL) and simulation results for read and write operation of data and address are shown in Verilog compiler simulator (VCS) tool. The operating frequency is set to 100MHz. Two test cases are run to perform multiple read and multiple write operations. To perform single read operation module takes 160ns and for single write operation it takes 565ns

Attitudes of undergraduates towards mental illness: A comparison between nursing and business management students in India

Background. Mental illness is an important public health issue worldwide; stigmatisation and negative attitudes towards people with mental illness are widespread among the general public. However, little is known about the attitudes of undergraduates to mental illness.  Purpose. To compare the attitudes towards mental illness among undergraduates enrolled in nursing courses v. those enrolled in Bachelor of Business Management (BBM) courses.  Methods. A cross-sectional descriptive design was adopted for the present study. A total of 268 undergraduates were selected to complete the Attitude Scale for Mental Illness (ASMI) and the Opinions about Mental Illness in the Chinese Community (OMICC) questionnaires.  Results. We found significant differences between the number of nursing and BBM students who agreed with statements posed by the questionnaires, e.g., that they would move out of their community if a mental health facility was established there (χ2=16.503, p<0.002), that they were not afraid of treated mentally ill people (χ2=15.279, p<0.004), and that people with mental illness tend to be violent (χ2=14.215, p<0.007) and dangerous (χ2=17.808, p<0.001). Nursing students disagreed that people with mental illness are easily identified (χ2=30.094, p<0.000), have a lower IQ (χ2=70.689, p<0.000) and should not have children (χ2=24.531, p<0.000). Nursing students were more benevolent than BBM students, as they agreed that people with mental illness can hold a job (χ2=49.992, p<0.000) and can return to their former position (χ2=11.596, p<0.021), that everyone faces the possibility of becoming mentally ill (χ2=38.726, p<0.000), and that one should not laugh at the mentally ill (χ2=17.407, p<0.002). Nursing students held less pessimistic attitudes, as they felt that the mentally ill should receive the same pay for the same job (χ2=10.669, p<0.031) and that the public are prejudiced towards people with mental illness (χ2=17.604, p<0.001). Conclusion. College students’ attitudes towards people with mental illness vary based on the course that they are enrolled in. Attitudes may be positively improved by revising curriculum design to incorporate educational sessions about mental illness. These are essential steps to combat discrimination, and potentially enhance the promotion of human rights for the mentally ill

Conformal Invariance in Percolation, Self-Avoiding Walks and Related Problems

Over the years, problems like percolation and self-avoiding walks have provided important testing grounds for our understanding of the nature of the critical state. I describe some very recent ideas, as well as some older ones, which cast light both on these problems themselves and on the quantum field theories to which they correspond. These ideas come from conformal field theory, Coulomb gas mappings, and stochastic Loewner evolution.Comment: Plenary talk given at TH-2002, Paris. 21 pages, 9 figure

Orthogonal methods based ant colony search for solving continuous optimization problems

Research into ant colony algorithms for solving continuous optimization problems forms one of the most significant and promising areas in swarm computation. Although traditional ant algorithms are designed for combinatorial optimization, they have shown great potential in solving a wide range of optimization problems, including continuous optimization. Aimed at solving continuous problems effectively, this paper develops a novel ant algorithm termed "continuous orthogonal ant colony" (COAC), whose pheromone deposit mechanisms would enable ants to search for solutions collaboratively and effectively. By using the orthogonal design method, ants in the feasible domain can explore their chosen regions rapidly and e±ciently. By implementing an "adaptive regional radius" method, the proposed algorithm can reduce the probability of being trapped in local optima and therefore enhance the global search capability and accuracy. An elitist strategy is also employed to reserve the most valuable points. The performance of the COAC is compared with two other ant algorithms for continuous optimization of API and CACO by testing seventeen functions in the continuous domain. The results demonstrate that the proposed COAC algorithm outperforms the others

Solving a Coupled Set of Truncated QCD Dyson-Schwinger Equations

Truncated Dyson-Schwinger equations represent finite subsets of the equations of motion for Green's functions. Solutions to these non-linear integral equations can account for non-perturbative correlations. A closed set of coupled Dyson-Schwinger equations for the propagators of gluons and ghosts in Landau gauge QCD is obtained by neglecting all contributions from irreducible 4-point correlations and by implementing the Slavnov-Taylor identities for the 3-point vertex functions. We solve this coupled set in an one-dimensional approximation which allows for an analytic infrared expansion necessary to obtain numerically stable results. This technique, which was also used in our previous solution of the gluon Dyson-Schwinger equation in the Mandelstam approximation, is here extended to solve the coupled set of integral equations for the propagators of gluons and ghosts simultaneously. In particular, the gluon propagator is shown to vanish for small spacelike momenta whereas the previoulsy neglected ghost propagator is found to be enhanced in the infrared. The running coupling of the non-perturbative subtraction scheme approaches an infrared stable fixed point at a critical value of the coupling, alpha_c approximately 9.5.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures, LaTeX2

Scalar brane backgrounds in higher order curvature gravity

We investigate maximally symmetric brane world solutions with a scalar field. Five-dimensional bulk gravity is described by a general lagrangian which yields field equations containing no higher than second order derivatives. This includes the Gauss-Bonnet combination for the graviton. Stability and gravitational properties of such solutions are considered, and we particularily emphasise the modifications induced by the higher order terms. In particular it is shown that higher curvature corrections to Einstein theory can give rise to instabilities in brane world solutions. A method for analytically obtaining the general solution for such actions is outlined. Genericaly, the requirement of a finite volume element together with the absence of a naked singularity in the bulk imposes fine-tuning of the brane tension. A model with a moduli scalar field is analysed in detail and we address questions of instability and non-singular self-tuning solutions. In particular, we discuss a case with a normalisable zero mode but infinite volume element.Comment: published versio

Southern Europeans in France: Invisible Migrants?

France fared relatively well at the start of the current economic crisis, but has experienced low economic growth and high unemployment rates in the recent years. As a result it has been a less popular destination with Southern Europeans and EU migrants in general in search of economic opportunities. Although their numbers have increased and represent a growing proportion of recent flows to France, they remain low compared to numbers observed in Germany and the UK. Despite this statistical reality, EU mobility and more generally the role of the EU in economic and social policy have been at the forefront of debates in France since the start of the 2000s, thus well before the start of the crisis. These debates have focused on two populations – the Roma and posted workers – with both groups being portrayed as threats to the French welfare state. Although posted workers are not migrants, according to official EU definitions, their characteristics and experiences are similar to other groups of temporary migrant workers. Southern Europeans account for an increasing number of posted workers, and although they have not been the primary nationalities targeted in discussions concerning this issue, the debates and policy changes introduced in the recent years concern them as well. Moreover, we argue that the focusing of political debates on other populations in France has contributed to the relative invisibility of Southern European immigrants in this country

Correlates of caregiving burden in schizophrenia:A cross-sectional, comparative analysis from India

Schizophrenia is a global mental health issue that has serious implications not only for the person with the diagnosis, but for caregivers as well. In Asian societies, the family tends to be the “natural” caregiver in such situations and the caregiving function is usually shouldered by parents or the spouse. Asian communities tend to be more closely knit, and it would be expected that more social support would be available to those facing distressing circumstances such as managing the demands of a person with mental illness. This study seeks to explore the perceived burden in family caregivers of persons diagnosed with schizophrenia, the coping strategies that come into play, as well as the extent of social support available to them. Standardized instruments were administered to collect data at a teaching cum treatment facility in south India. A quantitative methodology was used to analyze cross-sectional data from 75 primary caregivers of people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and a reference group of caregivers of patients with general medical ailments. Results indicate high levels of burden, low social support, and poor coping in the caregivers of people with schizophrenia than the reference group. Implications for intervention with caregivers are also discussed in this article